At kitchen tables everywhere, ordinary Americans have been grappling with the arcane language of deductibles and co-pays as they’ve struggled to select a health insurance plan during open enrollment season. Unfortunately, critical information that coul…
The Republicans don’t yet have a health care plan less than a year before the 2020 elections. But based upon their 2017 Obamacare repeal and replace efforts, as well as a major document recently issued by the House Republican Study Committee, wha…
As the year winds down and must-pass year-end spending bills are completed — and with that, any chance of attaching and approving health care legislation — the special interests have won big, and consumers have lost big. Employers, unions, …
Next in a series. The Healthcare Incentives Framework helps show how to fix incentives in health care systems. It starts by enumerating the five jobs we expect a health care system to do for us and then identifies which parties in the health care syste…
Over the past 40 years, the number of U.S. hospitals declined by 12 percent, from more than 7,100 in 1975 to 6,200 in 2017, according to the latest American Hospital Association survey. And, yet, despite shuttering nearly 1,000 facilities, hospitals re…
Fixing Obamacare and adding a public option is the health care policy territory first staked out by Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden. Writing about Biden’s plan recently on my blog, I said: If the Democrats capture the White House, kee…
As presidential hopefuls debate health care reform, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish statements rooted in fact from fiction. According to PolitiFact, only 27% of politicians’ media statements regarding health care — whether from Dem…
One of my elderly relatives was in line at the grocery store one day and saw the person ahead of him, charging what looked like a cart full of junk food to her food assistance card. My relative was incensed: Why, should his hard-earned tax dollars be u…
There are few things in our health care system that are more unfair than surprise medical bills. Consumers think they have good coverage and are getting treatment in their health plan network only to get a huge unexpected bill in the mail because it tu…
Migrating to the U.S. as an international medical graduate, I was shocked by the health care culture of excess. Initially, it felt good to order a CT scan on everyone who had a fall or cardiac enzymes on anybody who had atypical chest pain. I felt powe…
